Gareth Edwards to Direct ‘Godzilla 2′ After ‘Star Wars’ Spinoff

Reboots of popular film titles can go one of two ways: they can either take the best parts of the original and spin it in an exciting new direction or they can completely miss the mark. Thankfully for director Gareth Edwards, his new reboot of Godzilla was able to intrigue audiences enough to become king of the box office this past weekend to the tune of $93.2 million, the second highest stateside opening this year after Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

After filming documentaries, a TV movie and a short, Edwards first broke onto the film scene in 2010 with a small science fiction thriller, Monsters, before crossing over to the mainstream and making Godzilla. Now the British director is on his way to helming more box office tentpoles, including the just announced Star Wars spinoff, due in December 2016.

According to THR, today’s Star Wars spinoff news means the previously confirmed Godzilla 2 sequel, which Edwards is also attached to direct, will not begin filming until after the Star Wars standalone film is completed. In case this information is a little discouraging for Godzilla fans, apparently, as per Legendary Entertainment’s chairman and CEO Thomas Tull, this was always going to be the case:

“Gareth’s filmmaking talent makes him one of his generation’s most creative and visionary directors. The plan has always been for Gareth to direct a different film before we started on another Godzilla, but who knew it would be a ‘Star Wars’ installment? We have a great plan in store for ‘Godzilla’ fans and I am looking forward to seeing Gareth’s imprint on the ‘Star Wars’ universe.”

As is pretty standard for films with sequel potential, story ideas for Godzilla 2 and even Godzilla 3 already exist, but no scripts have been written yet and Godzilla 2 is still in early development. So this news allows at least a year for Legendary to hire a writer and complete a script before Edwards can even begin to think about returning for a sequel. Basically, don’t expect another Godzilla until 2017 at the earliest.

Of course, this only matters if Edwards remains attached to the Godzilla sequels. At this point, that remains the case, but it’s not hard to imagine scheduling conflicts if the release dates occur within a year of each other. Problems could push Godzilla back even further as Star Wars takes precedent, or Legendary could simply decide to change director. It should be interesting to see how the timing all works out.

Are you happy that Godzilla 2 and 3 are still in Edwards’ future? Are you sad that we’ll have to wait at least three years for another film? Let us know in the comments.

Godzilla 2currently has no release date. Stay tuned to Screen Rant for the latest.